Character Skills

Yesterday I wrote about the different character values. Today it's the character skills I'll describe.

During the game the characters gain XP. XP then can be used to acquire skills they can use in the game.

Skills are split into to categories: general and exclusive skills. General skills can be used by anyone even those who are not trained. If an untrained character tries to use a skill, he only has a 20% chance to succeed.

When a character learns a skill, a random skill percentage is determined and then modified by the Skill Modifier Table. Using the table, a character who learns a skill would never have a value less than 31. The maximum value for a skill is 99.

On the bottom of the entry you'll find skills that are only used for NPCs. Those skills are necessary to be able to use character skills.

The general skills are:

Shadowing:

• Ability to follow someone without being noticed.
• Shadowing check is done when:
  - Character being shadowed makes a move which would put him out of the sight of the follower (running into crowd, jumping on bus, suddenly get into a building). Failing check means character being followed has gotten out of sight.
  
  - Character being shadowed moves more than 60 feet indoors, two blocks in the city or two miles outdoors in the country. Failing check means the character knows being followed.
  
• In the game, the player assigns to one of his characters to shadow another one. The characters movements are then automatically generated by the computer.

Stealth:

• Ability to move short distances without being seen or heard.
• Ability to hide in a position where you can observe someone without being seen.
• Chars with this skill use darkness, shadows, doorways and other natural cover to stay out of sight.
• Skill check when:
  - Someone is looking for them or trying to see them during the turn.
  - Char has moved 60 feet.
  - Char first comes into someone's Field of Vision.
• Failing check means that other involved chars get to make an observation check. If they pass the observation check, they have seen or heard the char using stealth.
• There must be darkness, shadow or cover to use stealth. No one (except the own team) must observe the char who wants to enter stealth.
• Stealth cannot be used together with shadowing.
• Characters in a fight cannot use stealth (is dropped at beginning of fight).

Explosives:

• Ability to use explisives to make bombs, blow up saves, etc.
• Percent chance that char will set up the explosives correctly and safely.
• Failure means the char either made a minor or a major mistake.
• Minor mistake: ie. Fuse didn't work
• Major mistake: fuse too short; char blew himself up.
• Determined by difference between chars skill value and rolled value. Small difference -> minor mistake.

Finding smuggled goods:

• Ability to find smuggled goods hidden in a car, truck, boat, airplane or other vehicle.
• Char without skill will not find smuggled goods by searching normally. (Make explusive skill?!?)
• On check chars score is modified by smugglers smuggling score.

The exclusive skills are:

Accounting:

• Ability to keep financial records, alter them to hide stolen or misused money. (For bad NPCs)
• Ability to detect altered records. (For the good ones)
• Detect altered/doctored books:
  - Subtract score of accountant who doctored from the score of the accountant checking the books.
  - Use result as positive or negative modifier to the skill score of accountant checking the books.
  - Use modified score to make skill check. If modified score is negative -> automatic fail.

Ballistics:

• Ability to determine whether a specific bullet was fired from a specific gun.

Boxing:

• Char with boxing skill make a boxing skill check instead of agility check in a fist fight.
• Success means char has hit opponent twice in the same turn. One hit normal injuries, second hit double injuries.
• Failure means char makes agility check.
• All modifiers applies to agility score in a fistfight apply to boxing skill.
• Char with boxing skill rolling 5% or less when making boxing check knocks out opponent.

Counterfeit detection:

• Ability to detect counterfeit money.

Fingerprinting:

• Ability to take fingerprints at the scene of a crime, analyze and match sets of prints.

Gunsmithing:

• Ability to repair any type of firearm.
• Successful check means the char can repair the item.

Knife throwing:

• Ability to throw knives accurately in fist- or gunfights.
• Handled in the same way as gunfire but checks against knife throwing score instead of agility score.

Lockpicking:

• Ability to open locks using a small set of lockpicking tools.
• Needs lockpicking tools to use skill.
• Cannot be used to open a safe.
• Lockpicking takes some time (up to 3 turns).

Wiretapping:

• Ability to connect and run wires from someone's phone to another location where the phonecalls can be recorded.
• Location no more than 50 feet away from telephone pole carrying the wire for the phone to be tapped.
• Failing means the equipment malfunctions or char made error wiring the tap.
• Failure will not be remarked instantly. There will be no phone calls recorded. Player has to check this (ie. observation shows the phone is picked up and a call is done but nothing is recorded).
  

NPC Skills:

Accounting:

• If a book has been doctored by a NPC, the NPC must have the accounting skill. The NPC who doctored the book will be referenced in the book data.
• If the NPC who altered the book is not known, a Accounting value is stored in the book. This value is then used as the accounting skill score.

Counterfeiting:

• Ability to make printing plates, to run a press.

These are the currently planned skills. It's quite possible that one or the other might get dropped while a new one might see the light of day.

On another topic: It's quite possible (almost certain) that I cannot do any new blog entries until the end of the next week. This is due to the fact that I have some preparations to do for my wedding. Afterwards I'll leave for a week to a small honeymoon trip.

Next time I write, there'll be some xml code and talking about code refactoring. In fact, I reduced the character value components to one single component. Talking about that later :)

Have fun,

Stefan